1990 Willys MB Jeep - Mahindra based - body mounted.

[dieselmax]

Ladies and Gentleman, some progress on my jeep project:

am trying to marry a VW 1.9 TDI engine to the Mahindra gearbox. It takes some doing before they say 'i do'.



To make it as easy as possible, I started with a longitudinal mounted version of this engine, from a Passat, as this has the starter motor on the engine side, as well as more favourable engine mounts, a vacuum pump at the side of the engine, rather than at the back, and an engine mounted viscous Fan.

At the heart of this is a Valeo solid flywheel conversion kit for a 130 HP TDI. The 130 HP engine has a larger diameter clutch, and this clamps the Jeep friction plate perfectly:






I don't have much in the way of machining equipment, but I do have CAD. I also found a factory drawing with mounting pattern dimensions for the VW TDI, as well as a Factory drawing for the mounting pattern of the Peugeot Indenor engine that normally lives in the Mahindra. This gave me the bolt pattern for the gearbox.



On CAD, marying this up ended up looking like this:



The good thing is that this will be acurate by design, and Via a waterjet cutter, I can get the adaptor plate cut from CAD.



But first the plywood adapter




To this can the Mahindra bell house now be fitted:






So this is where I am now. next is dropping this lot in the chassis and see what obstacles we find next. It takes a while though..



Thanks for looking!



Daan

[JasonB]

Jun 10, 2019 19:03:25 GMT skodacious said:

It made me check out eBay too........(snip)

Yep, me too!
And I bet we weren't the only ones.
I have visions of the eBay search logger throwing up a flag and somebody investigating to think "Why is everyone interested in these things all of a sudden?"

Great work though.

[dieselmax]

Nov 12, 2019 13:10:07 GMT JasonB said:

Jun 10, 2019 19:03:25 GMT skodacious said:

It made me check out eBay too........(snip)

Yep, me too!
And I bet we weren't the only ones.
I have visions of the eBay search logger throwing up a flag and somebody investigating to think "Why is everyone interested in these things all of a sudden?"

Great work though.

The going rate for a Mahindra project like this is about £800 -1200 on ebay; I paid £1000 for mine. 
It is a bit hit and miss with these price wise, and although there is always a few people interested, very few people actually bid so they never go for big money.
It does not attract many people like an original willys does.
To do what I am doing, it also does still need a lot of parts buying before it is a Willy's though, so just buying one is not the end of it.

Interestingly, although the Mahindra is generally not expensive, the Mitsubishi jeep, which is essentially the same thing, although with a Mitsubishi diesel engine, tends to go for big money.
Like this one:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mitsubishi-Jeep-J53-Willys-CJ3B-w-Sankey-Trailer-Off-Road-Wrangler-Landrover/362805578954?hash=item5478e5ccca:g:QGMAAOSwML5dofeT

Daan
 

[skodacious]

Stop this temptation! Great to see progress 🙂

[jakebmx]

Love this, old school cool with a mad max off road feel and modern reliability and MPG.
Makes me want an off-road project so bad. Good luck with the rest of the build 👍.

[dieselmax]

A bit of progress to report on the jeep, I am now mocking up the front end:



The engine is a reasonable fit, it clears the bulkhead, apart from a preheating unit which sits on the back of the head and has a water pipe coming out of it. This can be replaced by a VW t-piece doing the same thing. Hopefully this will fit, otherwise a bit of fab work might be needed. The oil filter clashes with the LH chassis rail, this has been replaced with a VR6 oil filter, which is about 30 mm shorter, and fits.

More serious issues arrive when you look at the accessory drive:



The alternator has been swung round about 45 degrees to clear the chassis, which involve cutting off 1 bolt mount; so a bit of work to make the location work with 1 bolt currently held by a large sized sky hook....

Worse is still to come, as the PAS pump and its mounting had to be cut off from the engine completely. This will move to the other side of the engine, and driven by the second (currently unused) pouly on the crank.

Speaking of PAS, I dropped the steering box and front axle in to see how this will work with the engine:




It will go I think, just a clash with the drop arm at full lock, which I can solve with doing a Y tie rod conversion. As you can see, RHD is not easy with the diff and the box occupying roughly the same space. It took me a while to find a PAS box that will work in this application, but a LHD Rangerover P38 box you see here is the one to have I reckon.


So, here is where I am now. Things are going to be on hold for a while, as I am going to get my Landrover MOT ready. We need a 3rd car that works in my family, as My daily was out of action for a while due to a engine management issue and I had to use the bosses car. 

Thanks for reading,

Daan

[skodacious]

So great to see progress on this - way beyond my limited capabilities! 😁

[village]

I was going to suggest using a T4 Transporter PAS pump as it is located to the drivers side of the block (as viewed in the Jeep, it sits at the back of the engine in it's natural home), but it may be a bit close to the pumpkin on the front axle. might be worth a look though.

[dieselmax]

Feb 11, 2020 8:32:07 GMT village said:

I was going to suggest using a T4 Transporter PAS pump as it is located to the drivers side of the block (as viewed in the Jeep, it sits at the back of the engine in it's natural home), but it may be a bit close to the pumpkin on the front axle. might be worth a look though.

Cheers will do.

Daan

[strikey]

Saw this locally the other week and thought of this thread.

[niceonesquire]

loving this build. i have a tj with a chevy motor and it ripps. there was a 4x4 breakers at five bells in essex had a mahindra but that was years ago. i remember them having rust issues almost from new when they first arrived over here. there was a dealer in romford area at the time.always thought they were cool but never knew they were willys based.

[dieselmax]

Feb 13, 2020 12:34:11 GMT strikey said:

Saw this locally the other week and thought of this thread.

Interesting; comes up as Mahindra on registration check. There are a few out there! Looks like he has a rear mounted tank as well.

[dieselmax]

This is cheap:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283807158606?ViewItem=&item=283807158606

It is a long wheel base version though, so a willys jeep body won't fit.

Daan

[dieselmax]

An update, long overdue. There is 0 progress to speak of, due to me trying to get the landrover back on the road. But The project is far from dead, and I am keen to continue, once the landy is running again.

Instead of doing work I went shopping: Check out this little Gem:







I found it on Ebay, from a chap who imported a car from Thailand in 2006; He realised the body was not the same year as the chassis, and decided to get a matching WW2 body for it and sell this body. It is basically an M38 Jeep body (50s military Willys jeep as used during the Vietnam and Korea wars). So not quite WW2, but military all the same. It is in mint condition, has a neat paint job done on it (little patina, which i like. What's more, it is Right hand drive. All of this is not for the purist, but perfect for me, and was less than half the price of a new body. So I picked it up and dropped it on the Mahindra chassis. It is a close fit (not quite the direct bolt on I was expecting), One body mount needs to move on the chassis, and the front shock mount clashes (but is in the right place) with a bit of work it should go on there very well.






Thanks for looking!

[grizz]

That looks absolutely lovely.


I love the details, and loads of bits hanging off, sticking out etc, unlike smoothed off modern stuff.


Look forward to seeing the rest happen.

[Frankenhealey]

Sept 8, 2020 14:31:08 GMT dieselmax said:

I found it on Ebay, from a chap who imported a car from Thailand in 2006; He realised the body was not the same year as the chassis, and decided to get a matching WW2 body for it and sell this body. It is basically an M38 Jeep body (50s military Willys jeep as used during the Vietnam and Korea wars). So not quite WW2, but military all the same. It is in mint condition, has a neat paint job done on it (little patina, which i like. What's more, it is Right hand drive. All of this is not for the purist

Purists schmurists. Screw them! I love it and am extremely jealous

[Deleted]

What a thread boost!!
Great find that.

[hopeso]

That's a great find and buy.
Would love to get my hands on something like this. I saw one running around just outside Patong in Thailand a couple of years ago and fell in love with it.

[dieselmax]

Hi all, getting back on this project again. I have started with for me the most interesting part of this project; the chassis modifications. Starting with the springs. I want to stay with leafs in the interest of keeping it real, but the original spring packs were in a bad state. New ones are available, but that would be too easy; I wanted something a bit more 21st century, basically. Parabolic springs are all the rage, giving a much smoother ride due to less friction between the leaves, by having only 2 leaves, which only touch each other near the spring eyes.
So I looked for parabolics. These are not available for the willys jeep, so I am into adapting something. Land rover aftermarket para’s were an obvious choice, and it turns out the front springs of a landy are identical in length compared to a willys jeep spring. That was too good to miss obviously, but the rear spings were harder; I have been looking at just about every parabolic spring available, but nothing is quite right. Then a car set of rocky mountain springs appeared on the bay, which I snapped up, mainly for the front springs. I did offer up the rears as well, and with some measuring, I decided, they are going on too.

Parabolics vs. the rustbuckets:


Mounting them was not straight forward; I made use of the existing (rivet) mounting holes on the chassis. Although the front springs are the right length, they are not the same width, 2.5” as opposed to 1.75” of the Jeep, so still won’t fit. For the fixed points, I designed a bracket in CAD, that I got made by Blackbird industries; Mike Brown did a great job turning my drawing into reality out of 6mm steel, Cheers Mike:




The shackle ends I made myself. I drilled a load of holes in a 100 x 50 x 5 box section, then welded the tubes in:




A few grinding discs later, I had 4 shackle hangers:




Mounting the front was easy, the brackets being bolted to the original holes on the chassis
The rear was more interesting, the springs being about 5” longer:



The front hanger uses one original hole, effectively move the bracket up to the next hole. and one new drilled hole, using the bracket as a drill jig:



The rear hanger uses the 2 original holes, as well as the hole used to bolt the rear crossmember in place:



The rear springs were original 3 leafs, but I removed 1 leaf out of them, turning them into 2 leaf springs



Next problem is mounting the springs to the axles. The rear was straight forward using of the shelf parts: Due to the wider springs, you cannot use the original spring plates any more, so I got Jeep CJ7 spring plates, which have 2.5” springs as well. The U bolts also won’t fit, as the spring packs are half the thickness compared to the original springs. So I found some aftermarket jeep U-bolts, that have more thread on them.:


The front was more complicated. I bought CJ7 front spring plates too, but they did not fit, as they have 2” springs at the front. There is also a clashing problem with the shock absorber. I improvised for now with some wooden battings, but are going to have to make new spring plates for this to work. Heavy duty shackles are also in the works:


The springs are compressing quite a bit when I put my weight on them, which is better than the original ones, being rusted together solid.


I keep an open eye out on how the ride will be, the Mahindra is obviously lighter than the land rover they are meant for (about 150kg lighter), so we will see.



Thanks for reading,



Daan

[igor]

"turns out the front springs of a landy are identical in length compared to a willys jeep spring"

Could this have something to do with the fact that the first Landy prototypes were based on war surplus jeep chassis?